


La collaudo

by Desdemon



Category: Marco Polo (TV)
Genre: Drunkenness, First Time, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-15
Updated: 2015-01-15
Packaged: 2018-03-07 16:11:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3176953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Desdemon/pseuds/Desdemon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I require your presence tonight, Master Polo,” Jingim says. His face is cold, but he glances at Marco and away with detectable hopefulness. “After the evening meal.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	La collaudo

**Author's Note:**

> Vague spoilers for all of season 1, but particularly for the finale. Thanks to [KiaraSayre](http://archiveofourown.org/users/KiaraSayre/pseuds/KiaraSayre), who betaed without having any idea who these people are. I'm [hailaphrodite](http://hailaphrodite.tumblr.com) on Tumblr if you want to say hello!

A whisper of sound on the mats lets Marco knows that he and Hundred Eyes have a visitor. He whirls, proud of his expanding senses, halfway through a training sequence that has already left him panting.

His visitor is Prince Jingim. Marco bows immediately, trying not to make the gesture ironic, as they are supposed to be on better terms now.

“Ready yourself, Polo,” Jingim says with no preamble, and he takes off his outer robe.

Marco thinks it likely that he would not have survived in this place without kung fu. To mold one’s body into something dangerous is a process of discovering new things: dedication, focus, and stamina; the confidence in knowing that one can defend oneself when called upon; and, most crucially, the ability to react to any changing circumstance. Without this ability, Marco would still be the whimpering boy he was when he was left here, continually bewildered.

Now, he stretches his body out into a fighting stance and waits.

Jingim strikes fast, one arm whirling after the other. Marco avoids one, absorbs another into his shoulder, and executes a strike of his own, less elegant than the Prince's, but almost as sure. They circle. They clash again.  


Marco watches for some hint, but Jingim’s face does not betray why they might be fighting. Has he displeased the Prince somehow, without his knowledge? It has happened before, with no warning signs. He almost died of Jingim's displeasure the last time. But after Xiangyang, Marco hoped that the simmering resentment between them had cooled. Perhaps this is a test.

Every interaction in Khanbaliq is a kind of crisis, an obstacle that Marco must weather like a storm. Every conversation contains the possibility of failure, of a sudden misstep and a sharp fall. Everything here, absolutely everything, is a test.

Marco keeps himself tightly controlled, waiting Jingim out. Jingim surges forward; Marco recedes. He stays just out of Jingim’s reach, blocking when he cannot avoid a blow. Jingim completes a kick that leaves his stomach exposed, just for a moment, and Marco throws one leg into the empty space, connecting, sending Jingim staggering back.

He waits, leg suspended in the air, to see the results of his play. Jingim is bent over his stomach, struggling to get his breath back. When the prince lifts his head, he is, bewilderingly, smiling.

Marco lowers his leg, but he keeps his arms raised.

“Very good, Latin,” Jingim says, straightening up. His grin is simple, touching his eyes, and Marco lets himself relax out of his fighting stance. “Shall you and I celebrate your mastery of the fighting arts?”

“I think ‘mastery’ may be too strong a word,” Marco demurs, while wondering what a celebration with Jingim would entail.

Jingim half-laughs at this, a little huff of breath, and his smile twists. “Do not talk me out of complimenting you, Master Polo,” he says. “You will wait on me tonight, after the evening meal. I wish to drink to your successes.”

He glances at Hundred Eyes, who has been watching them intently with his inner eye, and then he is gone. Neither Marco nor his teacher can think of anything to say for a few moments.

“Well, Sifu?” Marco asks at last, turning to Hundred Eyes. “Do you think I should bring a knife to this ‘celebration’?”

Hundred Eyes inclines his head just a fraction of an inch, his version of a shrug. “If a knife would truly make you feel safe from Prince Jingim, then by all means.”

Marco can see his point.

\--

Guards let Marco into chambers that are nothing like Kublai’s. Jingim favors dark colors and clean lines, where his father must have decided that the more colors and lines his rooms contain, the more kingly he appears. The Great Khan is not wrong, but that overwhelming of the senses has never worked well for Jingim. In the center of a riot of gold and woodwork, Jingim looks small. Sitting at a low table in these elegant rooms, he looks… taller. 

Princely.

“Master Polo,” Jingim says grandly, and Marco can see that he is already a bit drunk. “Come and sit, for you and I have much to talk about.”

Marco sits, and Jingim offers him a bowl of airag, which Marco has to take with both hands to prevent a spill. He raises it to his lips, watching Jingim watch him with bright eyes. Jingim’s hair is loose and long, spilling over his shoulders like a woman’s. The only other time Marco has ever seen his hair down was the night the Khan nearly died. At the time, it signaled to him a lack of control in Jingim. He wonders what it means now.

“I have something of yours,” Jingim says, and from his sash he produces Marco’s crucifix. Marco starts to protest, putting the bowl down, but Jingim cuts him off. “No, listen to me. You were right.”

This is a good way to get Marco to listen. He licks his lips and waits.

“I did need this more than you did,” Jingim says intently. “I needed all the help I could get, at Xiangyang. And it was given to me.”

Marco raises his eyebrows. “Are you trying to tell me you are converting, Prince Jingim?”

Jingim laughs in that same short half-way as before, as though surprised by his own mirth. “I am not,” he reassures Marco. “What saved me was not the Christian god. It was you.”

This is said so straightforwardly that Marco finds himself uncomfortable. It is the first time that Jingim has ever said a truly kind thing to him. “I serve my Khanate,” Marco says, and he hopes they can leave it at that. First a real smile, then a kind word. Marco does not know what to make of this new, friendlier Jingim.

“I know,” Jingim says, and then he alarms Marco further by reaching across the table to take Marco’s hands. He folds the crucifix into them. “Please accept my apology for doubting your motives.” His skin is very warm, almost hot. “I was ungenerous, and you repaid me with kindness.” The crucifix is warm, too, from its time on Jingim’s sash. “I must thank you.”

Marco swallows, his mouth gone unaccountably dry. “And so you have,” he says, trying to smile. “And I will take this, if it means so much to you.” He withdraws his hands from Jingim’s, gently, so as not to offend, and puts the crucifix into his own robes. He puts his ambivalence about reuniting with his father’s crucifix away as well, to be dealt with later. There is enough to think about in this moment alone.

“It does,” Jingim says, and he starts to say something else, but then he stops. He stares at the tabletop between them, bowls and white liquid and his own two hands. All at once he leans forward and pushes himself to his feet, swaying like a reed in the empty space. Marco stands at once, reaching for his elbow, concerned for the safety of the table. He was not aware that Jingim was quite this drunk.

Jingim allows the touch, though he is frowning deeply, deliberately, as if to keep some other expression off of his face. He clutches Marco’s forearm, steadying himself for many long seconds, and then he turns to Marco and kisses him.

Marco stands perfectly still. Jingim’s lips rest against his for one beat, for two, and then they move, seeking a reply. There is only one possible response that Marco can give, so he gives it: very, very slowly, he parts his lips and kisses Jingim back. His heart thuds like a drum within him. This is a crisis he could never have anticipated.

Jingim kisses him lushly, wet and unsteady and with the faint tang of airag. When his tongue slides into Marco’s mouth, Marco breaks out in a sweat, gooseflesh tingling down his skin. He grasps Jingim’s robe, feeling a little drunk himself. The heat of it muddles his resolve to be cautious, to watch and listen and survive. He cannot be sure this is the right thing to do. This must be a test. Everything is a test. He must remind himself.

Jingim is sliding out of his outer robe, heavy cloth falling to the floor. Marco presses a hand to the triangle of skin exposed, just under Jingim’s throat, and ducks to kiss him there, scraping his teeth gently against his collarbone. Jingim moans, the sound vibrating against Marco’s mouth, and that is the end of Marco’s struggle. He is lost.

“Is this why?” Jingim asks him, almost unintelligibly, slurring in between Marco’s kisses. His fingers help Marco find the knots of his tunic, undo them, but his eyes are wide and a little desperate. “Is this why I cannot -” He moans again as Marco licks the skin under his earlobe. “- why I can barely look my wife in the eye? Is this the reason?” He shrugs out of his tunic and his skin is golden, and smooth everywhere except his new-healed scar, blossoming just under his shoulder, an ugly ripple in an otherwise still pond. 

Marco draws back to look him in the eye. “I do not know the answer, Jingim,” he says truthfully, and he leans forward again to kiss Jingim’s marred chest and inhale the warm, spicy scent of his skin. Truthfully, he does not care about the answer. Making Jingim’s business his business seems like bad policy.

Jingim makes a little sound, like a hiccup, and he pushes Marco down to his knees. Marco goes willingly, and he does most of the work for him once there, opening Jingim’s pants and lifting him out, holding Jingim’s flesh in his hand. He has never done this before, but that hardly matters. Marco is a fast learner.

With his hands curled tightly in Marco’s hair, Jingim tries to direct him, pushing and pulling, jamming himself farther into Marco’s mouth than Marco can take. Though Marco’s eyes water and his breath cuts off and stutters, Marco thinks that it is still very good. It cannot last long, however, with Jingim too drunk to stand on his own, let alone while being pleasured, so Marco is soon yanked up by his tunic and pushed over to the bed. 

Jingim settles down on top of Marco, and his hair is suddenly everywhere, a heavy curtain around their faces, and they are kissing in darkness. Marco shudders. Jingim’s weight crushes him down into the bed, Jingim’s cock hard and moving against his clothed hip, the wet suck of their tongues and lips loud in his ears. Strands of Jingim’s hair are in Marco’s mouth. He is drowning in Jingim, drowning in his clean, scented-oil smell, and all at once Marco feels set aflame.

He heaves to one side, toppling them both, and rolls Jingim onto his back. Jingim does not want to go, bucking under him, wrestling for leverage, but Marco gets one hand on his weak shoulder and the other in that thick black hair, and the matter is settled.

Marco releases his shoulder to divest Jingim completely of his pants, and to let himself out of his own. He expects a counterattack at this point, but Jingim just watches him through slitted eyes, hands fisted in the bedclothes, panting shallowly. Carefully, still with a tight handful of Jingim’s hair, Marco positions his cock in the right place. This is another thing he has never done before, but it cannot be so very different from women, and anyway, it is an imperative, a molten need inside of Marco, and so Marco will do it. He has not survived this long by ignoring his instincts.

Marco leans down, pinning one of Jingim’s knees between them, and he nudges forward, once. Jingim inhales noisily and twists under Marco, and Marco drops his full body weight down onto Jingim, holding him still while his hips rock forward, gentle but insistent, just a little further each time. Jingim breathes like a series of explosions in Marco’s ear, and then he is keening, little broken sounds running through Marco like the burn of alcohol, but Marco just closes his eyes and drinks in those lovely noises and pushes and pushes until finally, with a heartbreaking gasp, Jingim lets him all the way in.

\--

The next week at court is surreally unchanged. There are polite silences, and weighted words, and the ever-present possibility of death. Marco thinks he probably imagines the hunted look in Jingim’s eye. He debates many times whether to wear the crucifix again, but in the end, it stays under his chair, between leaves of his diary. He searches within himself for signs of any change of his feelings toward Kokachin. He does not find any. This is either worrisome, or good.

He trains with one eye on the door, waiting for another unannounced entrance, but it does not come. Hundred Eyes is not amused by his inattention, and Marco lands flat on his back more than once as his teacher tries to literally knock sense into him. Marco gets the feeling he is being punished for more than he has strictly told Hundred Eyes.

It is when he has stopped expecting a visit, of course, that Jingim stops him in the hallway.

“I require your presence tonight, Master Polo,” Jingim says. His face is cold, but he glances at Marco and away with detectable hopefulness. “After the evening meal.”

“Your father has asked me to a game of chess,” Marco says with real regret, and then, because he senses stormclouds, Jingim’s eyebrows drawing together, he adds, “May I wait on you afterwards?”

Jingim seems nonplussed, and on the verge of a question. “Yes,” he says at last. “Afterwards.”

Much later that night, when Jingim has borne him down to the bed, put Marco’s fingers in his mouth and placed Marco’s wet hands on his cock, he asks it.

“Do you do this for my father, too?” Jingim bites out, aiming it like an arrow but mostly wounding himself. “Is this one of the services you provide him?”

“No one else,” Marco answers, the only possible answer, which he is very annoyed to find is also true. He thinks of Kokachin and knows that if Jingim asked him, he would make it absolutely true. He does not know why. He is still not sure Jingim even likes him. A life-debt is not the same as true kinship here, and Marco is not kin with Jingim, no matter how many times the prince calls him “brother”. Jingim’s interest in him will probably fade. He knows this. But Marco has not survived this long by ignoring his instincts, and his instincts tell him that he must be here now, at the Prince’s side, in the Prince’s bed.

“No one else,” Marco repeats. Jingim stares at him, distrust looking soft in a flushed face, evaluating. Jingim’s lips tighten, and then he nods, once.

He slides one hand underneath Marco’s neck, and closes his eyes before kissing him. Marco’s heart thuds within him like a drum. He cannot be sure, for in Khanbaliq one is never sure, but he thinks he has passed the test.


End file.
